I still can’t go to the supermarket. Maybe at night, when the bread aisle really clears out. The tiny organic co-op, a little better, although I hid in the juice aisle while a kind woman I know checked out and took her daughter with her.
Continue Reading 60 comments November 18th, 2008
Tomorrow is H-Belle’s fifth birthday.
My mom drove the girls and me to Vermont today. We passed the hospital where Hannah was born.
Looking at the red brick hospital, I swallowed hard.
“I want to feel like THAT again,” I said to my mom. “That’s what I would like.”
“Then hang onto that,” said my mom.
Continue Reading 32 comments November 15th, 2008
Thank you to everyone who’s been so kind and concerned and full of good words and great soups and muffins and pasta and cookies and music suggestions and books and hugs and help and compassion and cookbooks and chocolate and glass gazing balls and flowers and air-conditioning dismantling and crib-taking-apart-ing and toilet installation and pure, pure love. You make me believe in a God, in something so much more than this this.
Continue Reading 51 comments November 14th, 2008
This said “WOW” before, but somehow that post got erased when I tried to write a new one.
May be quiet for a bit. Out of commission.
Sending love.
42 comments November 5th, 2008
My brain has morphed into a shifting patchwork quilt of red and blue states. Tomorrow? If you pump my arm? My eyes will do that little cartoon-slot-machine thing (CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! ONE RED STATE! ONE BLUE STATE! DAMN! TRY AGAIN!), all day long.
Continue Reading 20 comments November 3rd, 2008
ON WHERE I AM TODAY
I am out and about.
I am in a coffeeshop, typing to you.
Continue Reading 54 comments October 30th, 2008
You think you remember. British tea. Red Rose? Green plants. A stainless-steel plant spritzer. African violets. Weebles playsets, for you and your brother, Joe. Card games. Books everywhere, but less as time went on. Cut crystal bowls. Fruit-and-marshmallow salad at Thanksgivings. Her erosive self-doubt, her self-deprecation. Her brokenness. She had lost faith, in her mind, in her health, in her reason for being. She did not believe she had anything left to offer.
Continue Reading 34 comments October 27th, 2008
Profound depression—and the despair of ever being free of it—is a slippery state to describe to others, the compassionate others who do want to understand. You’re left feeling around in the dark, snatching the first word you can touch with your blind hands.
My dear friend M and I were talking about this last week. We grabbed onto the word together: beakers. It’s such an odd, absurd word, I have to ask myself if it’s real, if I made it up, if I’m spelling it right. A Muppet character, yes?
Continue Reading 62 comments October 25th, 2008
We all felt a little woozy and had to sit down.
Continue Reading 16 comments October 23rd, 2008
Because Vikki says it better than I can. Thank you, Vikki.
7 comments October 23rd, 2008
Get it while it's hot and bothered!